Recherche – Detailansicht
Ausgabe: | Juni/2023 |
Spalte: | 563-564 |
Kategorie: | Bibelwissenschaft |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Gentry, Peter J. |
Titel/Untertitel: | Text History of the Greek Ecclesiastes. Introduction to the Göttingen Septuagint Edition of Ecclesiastes. |
Verlag: | Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2022. 345 S. m. 4 Graph. u. 16 Tab. = De Septuaginta Investigationes (DSI), 017. Geb. EUR 150,00. ISBN 9783525560730. |
Rezensent: | Gideon R. Kotzé |
In this book, Peter J. Gentry, a well-known specialist in Septuagint studies and co-director of the Hexapla Institute, presents the results of his many years of research on the textual witnesses to LXX Ecclesiastes and the history of its text. It is an expanded version, in English, of the introduction to his Göttingen critical edition of LXX Ecclesiastes which was published in 2019. The goal of the book is to assist readers to observe the method and principles of textual criticism that G. employed to establish and reconstruct the earliest obtainable version of the text of LXX Ecclesiastes.
The book consists of three long sections and five shorter ones that are largely made up of lists. The first long section provides an overview of the available textual witnesses, the Greek manuscripts, the ancient translations (the Old Latin, Syro-Hexapla, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Coptic, Ethiopic, Old Georgian, Armenian, Arabic, and Old Church Slavonic versions), the indirect Greek tradition (Patristic quotations), and the printed editions. The second section examines the text history, the text groups and the relations of the Greek witnesses, the ancient translations, and the indirect evidence of the Patristic citations. G. gives brief characterizations of text groups such as the Hexaplaric recension, the Egyptian text-type, which includes, inter alia, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, the text of Codex Alexandrinus, the Lucianic recension, the Catena-text, and other smaller groups. He also looks at the sources for the three later Greek versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, as well as their textual character. The third section deals with the methodology to establish the earliest wording of the text of LXX Ecclesiastes. After an assessment of the Hebrew versions such as the Masoretic text and the Qumran fragments, the Syriac Peshitta, the Cairo Geniza fragment, and the Latin Vulgate, G. offers a few general remarks on the translation technique of LXX Ecclesiastes. (Translation technique refers to the approaches translators followed when they rendered source texts into target languages.) The rest of the section is devoted to the basic principles for the establishment of the earliest text. Given the aim of the book, this section, which contains many case studies and evaluations of textual evidence, is arguably the most important part of the volume. The shorter sections at the end of the book help users of the critical edition to understand its arrangement, as well as the sigla and abbreviations. There is a handy list of differences between his critical edition and the well-known Handausgabe of Rahlfs, as well as a section with corrections to the Göttingen edition that is important for its users to note. Finally, in two appendices, G. gives a computer-generated stemma for LXX Ecclesiastes and a complete list of Patristic quotations. Bibliographies appear throughout the sections and in the footnotes.
The book is primarily aimed at users of the Göttingen edition of LXX Ecclesiastes, but its target audience includes specialists in Septuagint studies and related fields of research as well. Some of the data and discussions of textual evidence, however, will be of interest to biblical scholars, text critics, and researchers who focus on the book of Ecclesiastes. For example, G. argues that the Greek translation of Ecclesiastes was not made by Aquila, as some scholars have concluded. Rather, LXX Ecclesiastes belongs together with other so-called kaige texts, a non-uniform group of translations and revisions that share some translational choices. According to G., the translation is most like Theodotion even though it is not the work of Theodotion himself. As for the Hebrew source text, G. notes that it was almost identical to the Masoretic text, but the evidence suggests that some variants in the translation are based on readings in the Vorlage. Translation technique is a focal point in the study of the ancient translations of biblical texts, and at several points during the discussion of case studies, G. remarks on the importance of translation technique as a consideration in the evaluation of variant readings preserved by the textual witnesses. It is unfortunate that G.’s general remarks on the translation technique of LXX Ecclesiastes only stress its formal equivalence (an approach to translation that endeavors to keep close to the wording of the source text). He claims that the translator followed an approach of extreme formal and quantitative correspondence between the Greek and Hebrew texts and elsewhere he refers to the habits and patterns of the translator as absolutely consistent, fixed, and rigid. To be fair, his few comments on translation technique in the case studies are more nuanced but he does not sufficiently highlight the rhetorical devices, functional render-ings, variations in translation equivalents, and concern for the demands of the target language reflected by LXX Ecclesiastes. Here was an opportunity to move beyond the description of the translation found in G.’s introduction to the English translation of Ecclesiastes in NETS (New English Translation of the Septuagint) and to give a more balanced view of the translator’s approach. It is a pity that G. decided to simply repeat the information in the NETS introduction. Specialists in Septuagint studies and related fields of research will undoubtedly find the examination and evaluation of readings in the third section of the book interesting. For the most part, G.’s reconstructions of the earliest wording of LXX Ecclesiastes are con-vincing, but colleagues might disagree with some of his interpretations of the textual evidence.
Overall, this is a very fine study of the text history of LXX Ecclesiastes that merits close analysis. The book succeeds in its stated goal and will, therefore, be an indispensable companion for users of the Göttingen edition. The publisher did an excellent job of preparing what must have been a difficult manuscript with many technical details for print. Attentive readers will notice only one or two small errors and editorial inconsistencies here and there.